Haunted River Essay

385 Words2 Pages
“Haunted River” Many have noticed that when something horrible happens in a place, that place is never seen the same again; for example, a death occurs in a house, and the people affected see only this death whenever they enter the house. To the same effect, in his poem “Rhine Boat Trip,” Irving Layton suggests that a place is forever affected by the events that occurred in its past. He does this effectively through allusion to the Holocaust, through contrasting imagery, and through the structure of the poem. In this poem, Irving Layton uses allusions to the Holocaust to communicate his view that a place will forever be haunted by its past. The Rhine River is told to be a very beautiful place, but Layton, instead of seeing its beauty, sees only the horror of its past. Images of “ghosts of Jewish mothers/ looking for their ghostly children/” (3-4) Layton has brought to his recollection of all the women and children that were innocently killed are not ghosts that haunt the river. Even so Layton describes the beauty of the Lorelei and its enchanting young ladies that sing ever so sweet, “starting at the blind sun The tireless Lorelei/”Even the sweet sounds in the Lorelei cannot drowned out the horrible cries, “murdered rabbis,” (10) and “cattle cars” (15) used for the transportation of the Jews, all allusions to the Holocaust, are what he sees when travelling this river. Layton suggests that the horrific past of the Rhine is so powerful that nothing can diminish its horror. A place can be extremely beautiful, but its past can forever mar this beauty; this is what Layton wants us to see. By alluding to the Holocaust, one of the most violent events in the history of the world, he effectively gets his point across; the Rhine River will forever be haunted by the ghosts of the Holocaust. Reading this poem shows how powerfully an event can affect a place. Through the
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